Meal kit provider Marley Spoon has notched up a full-year loss of $64.8 million but says the prospect of consumers increasingly switching to online grocery shopping bodes well for future growth.
The company, which started in Germany in 2014 and first listed on the ASX in July last year, said total revenue increased 73 per cent to 92.0 million euros ($A145.8 million) for the 12 months to December 31 while growth within Australia gained by 62 per cent.
Marley Spoon, which had recorded a $44.5 million loss in FY2017, delivered 688,000 orders - boxes containing recipes and fresh ingredients - in Australia in 2018.
The company said it had 173,000 active customers across Australia, the US and four European countries.
Active customers in Australia numbered 44,000 in the fourth quarter of 2018, up from a total of 31,000 in the same period a year earlier.
"The countries we operate in continue to show moderate GDP growth and we believe this trend will continue in 2019," the company said, adding that "we believe the consumer switch from offline to online shopping of groceries has just begun".
"This has been a watershed year for Marley Spoon," chief executive officer Fabian Siegel said, with "exceptional growth in sales across all of our regions".
"We expect that our margins will continue to increase over the coming year as we start to realise economies of scale in sourcing food - particularly as we go to more producers directly - and as we roll out computer-aided and more efficient processes throughout our manufacturing centres," Mr Siegel said.
"We remain confident that there is significant long-term opportunity to grow the business because of the size of our existing addressable markets and the opportunities to continue to penetrate these markets," chair Deena Shiff said.
The company launched Dinnerly, also a subscription-based weekly meal kit service, in Australia in March 2018 to cater to people looking for a relatively cheaper alternative.
It said the separate brand was specifically designed to appeal to a different kind of customer than Marley Spoon and was able to cut costs by reducing individual ingredients per meal, substituting digital recipe cards for paper ones and using simpler packaging.
Marley Spoon shares were flat at 49.5 cents at 1300 AEDT on Wednesday, down from a peak of $1.36 in August 2018.
MARLEY SPOON FULL-YEAR LOSS
* Full-year net loss of $64.8m after $44.5m loss in pcp
* Revenue up 73 pct to $145.8m
* No dividend
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